Dubai: While the beaches, desert, marine life and Nature are some of the UAE’s unique selling points, its residents do not seem to care much about their quality. Often, people enjoy a nice, sunny day on the beach, but leaving their trash behind now seems to be the norm.
Empty pizza boxes and soda glasses, together with plastic bottles, are the usual things left behind after families and friends spend a day out or host a picnic. They leave them behind for others to take care of, and to be cleaned after their departure.
If these things were removed immediately, the chances of such waste being washed into the sea would be reduced. It would guarantee better water quality and free the seas from plastic waste.
Just a few decades ago, beaches in many locations around the world were in pristine condition and nowadays, they are completely dominated by waste. The same applies to people going for a desert safari, and picnics. While the caravan of vehicles continues on its trip, the trash is left behind.
In the country I come from, the Netherlands, we enjoy a slogan called: “Clean beaches make people smile”. There are national campaigns to create awareness and make people feel responsible to clean up the place, where they have had a good time, before leaving and going home. The same awareness signs are visible in the forests or national parks, to keep everything clean and presentable for the next day or the future.
This needs to be applied in the UAE, too. People need to clean up before they leave a picnic spot. Leave the spot in the condition that you would like to find it the next time you are there.
— The reader is a Dubai resident.
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■ According to a Gulf News report published in March, motorists and beach-goers who throw litter or cigarette butts on roads and public beaches will be slapped with a Dh500 fine. The fine will double, then triple for each repeat offence for litterbugs.
